The hand that feeds you
by Goldenkeys
Summary: I was good, and then bad people came. The Mother Goddess did nothing. I tried to save her people, to protect them, she did nothing. I hunt for the men that killed them, she does nothing. It's ok. She'll be forced to move soon. I'm visiting her next.
1. Before I could see

I lived in the Temple of the Mother Goddess until I was seventeen. My parents dropped me off one day and never came back to get me.

I did what I was told, and every hour of every day, I prayed and I played the sweet little maiden, hoping that if I could be good enough, helpful enough, or kind enough, the Mother Goddess would answer my prayers and bring my parents back to me.

But it never happened.

Every coming year I would smile and sing and participate in the Midwinter festivities. I was the first up to light incense in the chapel every morning. I waited to take food after everyone else, just in case we ran out. And I tucked the younger girls in every night, telling them adventure stories of the lioness and her friends, stories in which good things happened to good people.

It wasn't until the Midwinter festival of my seventeenth year that I realized good things did not happen to good people, and that good things happened for the people that took what they wanted.

I was tucking in the last of the young children when I smelled it. Smoke. Not like the normal scent of incense, but real smoke, from a fire.

I tried to get the children out of their beds, but men barged into the room and one swooped me into the crook of his arm, carrying me down the stairs. He held me over his shoulder as he walked down the stairs, and I could see that the children in the room had awoken. I saw just enough before my captor turned a corner, to let me know that the young girls would not be saved. I saw terrible things before that room was out of sight. I saw things that weren't supposed to happen in sacred places, things that weren't supposed to happen to good people.

I wept and prayed for the Mother to intervene for her poor children, but there was no answer. I prayed for her to stop the man from lying me down and trying to hurt me. I prayed for her to help me stay pure, to stop him from holding my neck.

I prayed for her to stop him before I had to. But she didn't.

I pulled his own knife out of its hilt and stuck it into his ribs. He died on top of me. I was a virgin, but I was no longer pure. I felt a sour ball rising in my throat and I reeled as I vomited onto the floor. I saw the men coming down from the smoky stairs, bloody and laughing. When the building collapsed around me, I welcomed it.

It would have been better if that had been the end. But it wasn't.


	2. Seeing red

Rain shattered my sleep. I stood up and remembered the events of the night before. I saw that there were still some sections of the building smoldering, it had just started raining, I guessed. I walked to where the stairs to the second story stood. They were tattered, but standing. The second floor, however, was nowhere to be seen. The stairs stood as the only upright object in the center of the flattened debris.

I walked around, pushing and pulling until I saw a hand. A small hand. I knelt down and began digging furiously at the ruins around that tiny fragile hand. I found Moira. My little Moira. She had been feisty. Her ebony hair clung to her wet face as I pulled her to me. Her life was gone; I could feel that without my Gift. I held her away and wiped some water off of her tiny dark face. Her eyes were barely open, but enough for me to see the hazy glaze of death.

Those men, the fire, and now, after everything else that ravaged their poor little bodies, the rain made their clothes cling to their huddled little bodies, it made them slip out of my tired and injured hands. After everything that had happened, she wouldn't even stop the rain.

I looked up into the downpour as I held her, my little friend Moira. I screamed, loud and wordless. I screamed until my throat was raw and gasping sobs escaped from my mouth. And then I whispered, "Save your children. They were yours for protecting and you let them die, now bring them back." I looked back up into the pouring rain and scratched out another scream, "Bring them back!"

I waited, and nothing, I prayed and nothing. I was convulsing from cold, from anger, from grief. I made a promise to them right then, and a promise to myself. I would find the men that had hurt them, and I would make sure that each one paid with his life. "If you won't help them, if you won't avenge them, I will." I hoped that she was listening, our "goddess." I hoped that she felt my hate and that she choked on it, because after I was done with them, I would find a way to her. Were the Gods truly immortal? We would find out.

A/N: Please, be so kind as to review. Let me know what you think, good, bad, well, not too bad…maybe some constructive criticism. Thank You.


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